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November 3, 2013–Forgiveness is a Journey

faithlens

​Contributed by David Delaney, Salem, VA

Warm-up Question

What famous person or celebrity would you most like to meet? Would
it be a current music star or movie star or model? A public leader
like the president or the pope? A sports hero from one of the teams in
the World Series or the upcoming football season? A TV personality? A
character from a reality show? Or the star of the latest viral video
on Youtube?

Whoever that would be, imagine that this person came to your town and
decided to have an open air parade where she would just ride down the
street and wave to people with no one holding the crowds back; people
could just come up to her and say hello or climb up on the car or
anything. Keep in mind that this is someone who is probably very, very
popular, so the crowd is going to be huge. What do you think your
chances would be of getting close enough even to say hello, let alone
have a conversation? That is how a lot of people felt when Jesus came
riding through Jericho that day on his way up to Jerusalem. Because of
his miracles and teaching, common people were fascinated with him and
religious and political authorities distrusted him, so he was someone a
lot of people wanted to see.

Let’s make the situation harder: The morning of the parade where you
are going to see your celebrity, you just sprained your ankle and
you’re on crutches, so you can’t even walk up to the parade. You have
to watch from a distance. Don’t forget: this is someone you *really*
admire and would give anything to meet. Right when the parade is
passing and hundreds or even thousands of people are crowded around,
your celebrity looks right at you and points and says, “I have to meet
*that* person!” You – along with everyone else – would be stunned. How
did she even know you?

Let’s make the situation even more complicated yet: Let’s say you’ve
done something – at school or in your community – to make everyone
despise you, like you won the lottery by cheating or something like
that. No one can prove it, but everyone knows that it’s true, so they
basically hate you. Now, when the celebrity looks at you and calls your
name, the crowd is not only stunned, they’re angry and resentful. This
is very much what the scene would have looked and felt like to
Zacchaeus when he saw Jesus pass through Jericho.

Forgiveness is a Journey

Many people have not heard of a small but committed movement called “The
Forgiveness Project.” The aim of this movement is to collect and share
stories where people have found peace and renewed relationships by
forgiving someone who has harmed or deceived them. In some cases, the
harm that had been done was quite significant – murder of a loved one,
permanent injury, spousal unfaithfulness, squandering all of a family’s
resources, and other things like that.

In August of this year a prominent friend of The Forgiveness Project
named Anne Gallagher died suddenly, and her death inspired a lot of
renewed sharing about her unique ability to bring about reconciliation
through forgiveness. Anne was from Northern Ireland, where she had
started her own organization, “Seeds of Hope,” as a way of helping
people who have either been victims of the long and violent conflict in
Northern Ireland (what the Irish call “The Troubles”) or have been
perpetrators of that violence, especially if they have been imprisoned.
Its primary vehicle for forgiveness and healing is shared
story-telling.

Anne Gallagher’s gift was somehow to inspire people to see the
humanity in every single person, regardless of what terrible things they
might have done. Yet her death has also allowed her friends and
followers to recall the importance she attached to forgiveness when
reconciliation was the goal. People could not just start to get along
again or pretend that the past did not matter– they had to acknowledge
the harm they had done or the harm that had been done to them, and only
then, when faced with another person who did not really deserve to be
forgiven, could true forgiveness occur and reconciliation follow.

“Forgiveness … is needed to bring closure to the pain and suffering
experienced in Northern Ireland,” Anne said. “You can’t contemplate hope
unless you address despair. To heal the wounds of Northern Ireland I
believe you have to see humanity in the face of the enemy. But
forgiveness is a journey. Today you can forgive and tomorrow you can
feel pain all over again … for me forgiveness is about grace. To be able
to forgive someone who has hurt you is a moment of grace.”

Discussion Questions

We do not know how the conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus
started, but somehow it ended up with Zacchaeus admitting to Jesus what
he had done and vowing to make the same admission to those he had
cheated, so that there could be both forgiveness and reconciliation.
Can you see any similarity between Jesus actions and the vision which
inspired Anne Gallagher’s work?

What gives people the courage to forgive when as in the case of
Northern Ireland, there is long tradition of distrust, violence, and
pain?

(Text links are to Oremus Bible Browser.
Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of
readings for Year C at Lectionary Readings.)

Gospel Reflection

This passage allows us to take up one of several roles, depending on
our life circumstance. For some of us, it is possible to look at things
we have done and presume that we are no longer able to be on friendly
terms with the “decent” people we know because of our guilt. Others of
us are content to let people who are obviously bad stay out of our
lives. Others of us are – like Jesus – strongly motivated to overcome
the divisions we see between people around us.

What a gift Jesus gives us here to pass on, especially if we are
someone who is not always on the receiving end of hatred and rejection.
We can reach out to those who are. It is possible that they have earned
the negative reputation they have, but – like Jesus – we can go to them,
not out of moral superiority or in order to demand justice, but just
because we want the relationship to be restored.

Who knows what might come of that if it is tried? And if we are the
ones who have been rejected – with or without justification – imagine
the joy and gratitude we would experience at being encountered by those
who we thought would never have anything to do with us!

Discussion Questions

It is difficult to overestimate the dislike that the Jews of
Jericho would have had for a tax collector in Jesus’ day. First of all,
the Jews generally despised the Roman Empire because Rome continued to
occupy the territory that the Jews considered to be their ancestral
promised land, so anyone who worked for or collaborated with the Romans –
such as tax collectors – would have been considered a traitor to the
Jewish cause and also “unclean” for worship because of the tax
collector’s frequent contact with the Romans who were pagans.
Furthermore, tax collectors were on their own to determine what amounts
to charge, as long as they gave the correct amount to the Roman
authorities. Jericho was a border town, which meant that anyone who
crossed either way had to pay a customs tax and was at the mercy of the
tax collector. An ambitious tax collector might very well charge as
much as four times a normal amount to someone who was obviously anxious
to get across the border. Shortly after Jesus’ day the law among Jews
was that if a tax-collector came into your house, the entire house and
everything in it would become religiously unclean. How does this inform
or change your view of what a serious matter it must have been when
Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house for a meal? Look back in the
previous chapter of Luke and see if this helps make sense of passages
like 18:31-34.

Note the placement of this story. If you look at the rest of
chapter 19 and through to chapter 22, what is getting ready to happen to
Jesus? Is it surprising that Jesus takes this kind of risk, knowing
that he already has enemies in the Jerusalem area? What other kinds of
risky and surprising things do we see Jesus doing in this gospel and in
the other gospels?

What does it mean when Jesus says “Salvation has come to this house”
? What do we think when we hear the word “salvation,” and does a
passage like this inform or change our ideas at all? If we think of
salvation only in terms of what happens to us after we die, this passage
doesn’t make much sense, but if salvation is as much what happens to us
now, in terms of growing close to God, is that a better understanding
of salvation, especially here?

The overall story in Luke’s gospel is full of criss-cross patterns.
This passage actually has a kind of parallel to the instructions given
by John the Baptist to both Jews and Romans back in chapter 3:7-14.
Note even the parallel reference to children of Abraham. What is this
passage teaching us about our own possessions, our own honesty, our own
tendencies to be greedy, and our own relationship to the poor and needy
around us? Let’s imagine what our own reactions would be if Jesus
himself showed up in the flesh to one of our homes for a meal. What
would we find ourselves admitting to him? What would we promise to do
to be faithful to the call to gospel living that is in both chapter 3
and chapter 19?

Activity Suggestions

Invitations to meals are always a good way to build relationships.
Are there people in the school or neighborhood – or even the
congregation – who would welcome an invitation to a meal with the youth
of your church? Plan a meal and then ask them if they would like to
come join you!

Use the various online and other tools that are available to you to
find places in the world where unjust economic practices have created a
rift of hatred between the wealthy and the poor or between those who
have power to extort money from the population and those who are
victimized by that. Keep these people – perpetrators as well as victims
– in your prayers throughout the rest of the fall.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, in your love you have reached out to the lonely, the
rejected, and the guilty in every generation, and you have reached out
to us as well to announce to us that you intend to come and make your
home in our lives and our hearts. Give us, we pray, the strength to
welcome you with repentance and gratitude and courage, so that we may in
turn welcome others into the family of Abraham’s children. In your
holy name we pray, Amen.

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